


like a rubberband until you pull too hard

by shortitude



Series: elastic hearts [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bellamy continues to have it bad, F/M, Raven is an unreliable narrator, Sharing a Bed, but only these ones play active parts in the fic, not actually bashing him either but, not the most Wick-friendly fic, other characters also get a passing mention, standard warnings apply
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 23:03:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4117972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/pseuds/shortitude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three times Bellamy and Raven fall asleep together. And nothing happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like a rubberband until you pull too hard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [semele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/gifts).



> I should note before you begin that this piece does not treat Kyle Wick kindly. There might be hints at behaviour that's considered (emotionally) abusive, and if that squicks or triggers you I'm sorry. I stand by these decisions, however. The truth is, I don't think he's got the tact or patience to deal with Raven and what she needs; we've seen hints of it, in his comments about her brace and in the way he pushed his agenda on her after sex, though she'd made it clear it was because they could die the next day. He feels like Nice Guy TM to me, and I'm not saying that Bellamy's your unproblematic fave, but... Anyway, it's only treated in the third story, so you can avoid it and enjoy the rest. Or don't and keep going, like I said - not the boss of you. 
> 
> Otherwise, this continues to be part of the _elastic hearts_ series; I challenge you to figure out when it happens in the year described in _watch the queen conquer_. Also, enjoy?

**1.**

Some people are made for politics, some aren’t. It surprises Raven to figure out, after watching him interact with the other Council members during the first official meeting, that Bellamy isn’t. He has the patience to lead, when guided by someone with significantly less patience than him, but his fuse is short when he has to be diplomatic. It amuses Raven, really it does, because she can’t imagine why he’d have put her forward as a candidate when he knew well enough that she was even worse. 

One of these days, she’s going to tell either Abby or Kane to go fuck themselves. Or maybe each other, and give everyone a break for like half an hour. 

Politics isn’t something she’s keen on, preferring rather to be in her workshop working on the greenhouse designs. Nevertheless, politics now include her group of people – forty-something people, all of which she knows by name, all of them actually coming to Raven for company, for advice, for sympathy – so she compromises. She also feels that she needs to, because everyone knows the Council was a group of people who later on formed smaller groups among themselves for support, and Bellamy needs his own support system. 

Now, Bellamy – she’s been watching him more closely in the last few months, for reasons. They haven’t kissed since that one time in her workshop, and neither of them have made a big deal of it. But there’s something not entirely right with Bellamy, and he becomes a puzzle she has to solve; a broken thing she has to fix. 

It’s Monty who tells her, because Monty and Bellamy and Clarke all came out different from Mount Weather in their own way; hell, it must’ve fucked Clarke up pretty badly if she up and left. (Good, Raven thinks. There’s no chance in hell she would’ve held back on asking Clarke if letting Finn die for the Grounders’ support had all amounted to something worth it. And she knows there’d been more to it than what she’d seen; when she’s sane and lucid and logical, Raven doesn’t want to be the villain or the bitch.) 

She catches Monty in a more talkative mood one day, when they’re working together on the greenhouses; Monty still knows plants a lot better than anyone in Camp Jaha right now, so he brings a lot of input to the table. It’s not particularly subtle, when she brings the subject up – it’s tactless as hell, just “What’s wrong with Bellamy?” – but she doesn’t regret asking. 

Her reaction to the truth is a complicated one. On the one hand, she understands better _why_ Bellamy would feel like the moment wouldn’t feel right. On the other hand, she now knows how much more blood is on his hand, and how much of it is innocent. _Was_ innocent. The thing is, so had their friends – their _people_ \-- been: guiltless and dragged in the middle of this Grounders and Mountain Men war, and used like little more than cattle. There’s a reason Raven’s decided to stay the hell away from meat; that’s also the reason she’s so determined to finish up the greenhouse before winter rolls in, and her options for sustenance run out. 

Morality and ethics would dictate that she should consider Monty, Bellamy and Clarke monsters for what they did. But logic would have to push her to conclude that they were only such monsters because they were fighting a bigger monster. And yet, given that she heard about morality and ethics from the same people that allowed her mother to trade Raven’s rations for booze for years without punishment, Raven doesn’t really care much for moral codes created by people on the Ark. Her own code is what guides her, as always it has, and maybe because she’s petty and angry at the Mountain Men still, she’ll never blame Bellamy for doing what he’d done. 

He blames himself enough. This, she could tell you without hesitation. He’s probably added up their faces and their names onto the pile of faceless people who died because he’d fucked up her radio. 

You learn pretty quickly on the ground that you aren’t _good_ or _bad_ : you’re surviving. He’d thought he’d done what he’d done to ensure his survival and Octavia’s, and Arkers died. She’d done what was necessary to protect their people, and Grounders died. What gives her the right to claim a moral high-ground on this, really? 

Though now she knows, she doesn’t tell Bellamy she does. She doesn’t mention that Monty told her, or that she even talked to Monty about it; she doesn’t tell anyone that she quietly hugs Monty for ten minutes, until he stops trembling. Raven is many things, and private is one of them. (After all, nobody knows about her and Bellamy, do they?)

So it’s important to underline that this surge of sympathy and unexpected tenderness for Bellamy isn’t why she asks him to go with her on a walk after the first meeting. Pity isn’t why. Loneliness isn’t why, either; Wick is out in Mount Weather again for foraging their tech, and the sad truth is that months later she still hasn’t managed to make it clear to him what she does and doesn’t want, but they’re trying it out – the friendship thing. Some days it works, most days it’s just Raven wishing he’d have another trip away from Camp Jaha as soon as possible. 

She’s tired, mentally and physically, but the forest is a safe enough place now that once they’re deep enough into it and far enough from the Camp, she doesn’t want to go back. It’ll be killer on her hips and back to not sleep on her thin little mattress, but she doesn’t care. This late in the year, the birds have mostly migrated to warmer templates, and when they finally happen upon a clearing, the silence deafens and soothes. 

There’s a rock, shaped like a platform and overlooking a small green valley, and when they sit down on it the rock is still warm from the sun. It’s past dusk now, the last line of the sunset disappearing into dark, and the sky opens up suddenly and gifts Raven with her stars. There’s enough space on the platform for both of them to lie down, and that’s what they do. For a while, it’s just them and the silence, and the stars; then, Bellamy moves his arm and his fingers brush very lightly against the back of her hand, and she feels afloat, Spacewalker on Earth. 

Carefully, she negotiates how far they can stretch this before they hit a wall again, and turns her hand to touch her fingertips to his. “You just wanted someone to share the misery with you when reunions went bad, didn’t you?”

He scrapes blunt fingernail down the center of her palm, and Raven stays still, still, very still. “That, and you’re good at telling people to get their heads out of their asses.” His voice, in this natural quietness, feels so much closer to her ear. It makes her shiver, and shivering makes her remember the last time – all their last times always feel like eons ago: last time he was inside her, last time they kissed. 

“So – you know that includes you too, right?” She turns her head to look at him, and finds his half-a-grin blinding. In the dark, and all.

“I get off on it.” 

Like a jolt, between her ribs and between her legs; he keeps doing this, awakening her momentarily from this self-imposed abstinence. Everything Raven knows and believes about loyalty and monogamy tells her that it shouldn’t be _him_ to do this. Everything she knows about herself tells her it makes sense, in a way, that it _is_. 

“This okay?” he’s asking, as he threads his fingers through Raven’s, and she figures that he must know. He must’ve seen how often she’s flinched when being grabbed, how often she’s squirmed her way out of hugs that were given to her first. Silently, because words falter again, she nods and closes her eyes when he brings their palms together. 

“Is it okay if this is all –“ Her question.

“Yeah. This is enough.”

She opens her eyes again, because she has to. Has to marvel at him, him and that image he’d cultivated of himself so expertly; he’d had Raven believing that he really wasn’t the sort of guy who’d care, even if just for a night. But now, she has to wonder if he ever hasn’t. The feeling of guilt hasn’t been back in a while, with their duties making interactions rare, and Kyle being back in Camp making them even rarer. But it is now, again. “I’m sorry I haven’t figured myself out.” 

She’s petty, it’s known: throwing the same words that have been thrown in her face by her last lover at Bellamy, like it’s some sort of a test. Like she expects him to fail it. 

“It’s fine.” 

It goes to show, he defies expectations. She runs her thumb along the knuckle of his thumb, and lets her gaze get drawn back to the sky. Time passes, as it does. Silence falls, as it comfortably can between them. They hold hands; it’s ridiculous, it’s tender and ridiculous and are they really this sort of people? Apparently, the answer is yes.

She feels comfortable here. The warm rock beneath her, the stars above, the green around her. She feels comfortable and safe enough to close her eyes, to fall easily into playing with his fingers, first consciously and later idly. Comfortable, like she hasn’t since perhaps before Finn was thrown in juvie; a whole eternity ago. 

And so, exhaustion catches up and the silence invites it; Raven falls asleep. At one point, he must fall asleep too, because they both wake up later, when it gets colder. Frowns on their faces, disoriented for a few seconds but with their hands still touching. She looks at him, he looks at her. Her throat is dry when she speaks, and her words are made vulnerable by sleep perhaps, but: “I don’t want to go back.”

He agrees with a grunt, and pulls her closer in his arms. She doesn’t flinch, because she doesn’t look away from him until he tucks her head under his chin. Her brace drags her left leg down with its weight, but he maneuvers his way around that one easily too; he hooks one leg around her left one and pulls her leg between his, letting her rest on her right side more comfortably, and significantly closer to him. 

And this? This would be the first time she’s fallen asleep in someone’s arms since Finn, the first time she’s allowed herself to cuddle someone after Finn. If he knows it, he doesn’t make a comment about it. If she knows that those are his lips she feels at the roots of her hairline, she doesn’t make a comment about it either. 

**2.**

It happens while Raven is busy with installing the greenhouse with Miller, so she doesn’t find out until later that there’s been assignments handed out while she wasn’t looking. Sure, she’s young and she’s no expert at being a Council member, and half the time she doesn’t want it and sticks around only because Miller’s dad needs the backup and Bellamy needs the support, but she is livid when her council seems irrelevant when it comes to anything the Camp can’t use. 

She’s great and useful for the Arkers when they need her mind for improvising operating rooms and repurposing Mt. Weather tech for the winter, but when it comes to her opinions about not sending the former Delinquents back on a supply run, they become utilitarian. 

If it weren’t winter, if there wasn’t snow making the trek hard, she would take off after them. She finds out, when the shift is over and the greenhouse is installed, that Monty and Harper have been assigned on this trip to the mountain because they’re young and capable and strong, and that Bellamy’s gone with the envoy to act as a guard. Bellamy, well now she can’t speak for him and his decisions; she knows he’s named himself the guard just so he could keep an eye on the other two, because he’d rather chew nails than go back into Mount Weather. But Monty and Harper, she’s supposed to be representing them, she’s supposed to be allowed to make decisions to protect them. 

It only takes them a day to come back, but Raven is restless in those hours, and Miller joins her. It doesn’t matter that this group won’t spend the night, unlike the one made up of engineers and doctors and guards and volunteers who went to Mount Weather willingly to study it, to live there in the interim because it’s warmer than the Ark and they haven’t been kept prisoners there to develop a hard distaste for it. What matters is that they have to return at all. 

So yes, when they come back, she takes one look at their faces and marches straight into Abby’s tent, and fuck it all. 

Later that night, after they’ve all drank their fill of what the adults already suspect is moonshine, after word of Raven’s outburst has spread, the waters seem to settle. For most people, at least, they thankfully do. But for a select five, it’s harder. 

The inside of the Ark has been divided into small rooms where possible, reusing the living quarters they already had from when the wreck was still a Station. There’s more people on the ground than rooms in the Ark, so they’ve taken to sharing. Though because of her shining personality and her ties to the cot in her workshop Raven’s been left alone, she still has room to learn better. 

It turns out, and she finds this out now of all nights, that Bellamy’s been bunking with Monty – this would’ve surprised her at any other time, but given the bond that ties them together since Mount Weather, and given the way Jasper might always hold a grudge, it makes sense; the truth is, there’s something about Monty Green that begs you to take care of him. She’s not invited into said room per se, as much as she ends up following them. In the end, they gather up a crowd: her, Monty, Harper, Miller and Bellamy. And moonshine. 

It’s a safe place, or at least a safer place, in which to bitch about the status quo not having changed for them, in which to remember easier days, in which to even share a few very quiet laughs. But they’re quiet people now, quiet in their gathering rage and quiet in their joy; all five of them. 

As the night comes closer to the morning, she ends up in Bellamy’s bed for reasons that are tied to logistics; at least this is what she tells herself. Monty, Miller and Harper all have piled up together on Monty’s bed, sleeping a dreamless sleep. From where she lies, she can see that their expressions are calmer now, that the frowns between their eyebrows are gone. She can see that Miller’s got one arm under Monty’s head, and one around Harper’s shoulders; she can tell, in the dark, that Harper’s arm is stretched out across Miller’s chest to touch Monty’s shoulder. She can tell that they’re clinging. Maybe this is what people do: in the dark, they cling. To warmth, hope, comfort. Whatever they can. 

Bellamy behind her is quiet, his face pressed to the nape of her neck, his arms wrapped around her waist and his knees under her knees. She can feel it, in the way he breathes against her skin, that the booze he downed like painkillers had its effect and he’s sleeping. And though this is one of those moments, when she could easily slip out of their room and make her presence scarce, Raven clings, too.

**3.**

The last month of winter is the worst one. Primarily, Raven has to work inside the Ark during it, because it’s too cold outside and the snow has turned into ice in places. First thing she resolves to get done for herself by next year is a brace that makes it easy to walk in the snow; maybe something that can melt it under her foot as she steps. 

The last month of winter is the worst one, too, because Wick comes back from Mount Weather. Technically, the bunker is much better equipped to deal with the climate than their adapted (and mostly improvised) Camp, but he chooses to be in the returning party when they come back with more blankets. The thing is, it becomes clear pretty fast that he doesn’t think anything other than the climate has a reason to the cold. 

Nobody is in the workshop with her when he comes in with a self-assured smile and wraps his arms around her. Nobody is there to notice that she flinches, nobody can read it in her face that she’s just compared the way he holds her to how Bellamy does. (Bellamy would linger; Kyle already leans in.) She dodges the physical contact, none too smoothly, and pretends it’s because she’s busy.

Unfortunately, the problem is that Wick is smart, too. Unfortunately, the problem is that he doesn’t know who to blame, so that’s more fuel to the fire. Like plenty of times before, he opens his mouth and makes her feel a strange combination of mad and shitty. “Wow, Reyes, I’m impressed. Didn’t think you’d be the type, given your history.” 

Another thing she notices too late: he only brings up Finn when he’s able to use him as an example for how much worse her life was before he came into it. Finn is only ever remembered so he can rub her nose in something.

By god, does it work. She’s rattled instantly, “Be the type to what?” 

“Come on. Playing dumb might work on you current boy toy, but it doesn’t fly with me.” 

There it is, confirmation. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know, that she hasn’t told him and that they’re not _anything_ \-- that he hasn’t had access to her vagina since that one and only time – because he feels entitled enough to her that he’s gone straight to slut shaming. And with a reference to Finn, like a cherry on top. 

So of course, that’s when Bellamy comes into her workshop, tarp in his arms and a softer looking blanket barely visible under it; the latter, she can guess was for her, and for the sake of avoiding a scandal, she hopes Wick doesn’t see it. 

“I heard you were back,” Bellamy says to Wick, but his tone says _Is there going to be a problem here?_

“Yeah, I’m beat but I came to say hi to our star girl,” Wick answers, and his tone says – whatever it says, Raven’s too tired of hearing it. 

“You guys can reconnect outside, I’m busy.” She walks up to Bellamy, and grabs both tarp and blanket out of his arms, closing the conversation. At least, she thinks she has, but she’s been wrong about Wick’s perseverance before. 

“I think you owe me at least –“

“No,” she cuts him off, turning around on him so fast her heel hurts. “No, I don’t owe you anything right now. I’m done talking to you right now. Go, get some rest, and if you want to talk to me you come do it when you’ve taken your head out of your _ass_.” Her voice is trembling by the end, she notices; Bellamy does too, looking between the two of them with his shoulders tense, like a guard dog ready to pounce. She hopes he doesn’t, she really does. She doesn’t need him fighting her battles for her, doesn’t _want_ him to. He’s handled enough of her boy drama.

Wick, be it because of the public or not, seems to get the hint and leaves. As he does, Raven feels a sickening twist to her stomach, a sorrow she can’t explain in words. It’s hope, dying; it’s watching proof that friendship isn’t possible when it seems like one side wants and perhaps _wanted_ more from the start unfold. 

His absence takes a while to accommodate, and she stands there staring at the door to her workshop until it becomes blurry. Angry, she sniffs and steels her shoulders, willing herself away from vulnerability by sheer stubbornness. When she turns, Bellamy is still there, watching her, frowning. 

“Thanks for the blanket.” 

She nods to the pile in her arms, before walking back to her work station. She misses his nod in return, she misses him leaving her alone with her thoughts, and then she just plain misses _him_. 

But for the rest of the night, and she works well into it, it’s good to be alone. She can slam things against the table, she can be vicious when she cuts wires with a knife, she can be angry without judgment or the need to stifle it. Wick has left a mark, dragged nails down her soul and left her exposed and full of self-hatred; what’s worse, she has a feeling that was his intention. 

It only gets worse when she’s too tired to work, and too cold to fall asleep. Then, the workshop feels huge around her, and cold and dark, and she allows herself to compare it to what the inside of her heart feels now; maybe this is her, cold and dark and mechanical. 

Her tears have a way of showing her otherwise, though; starting to fall after the first five seconds she’s been in the cot. She thinks about Finn, she thinks about how she told him she wanted to be loved in a way that was different that what he could give her, she thinks about how Wick’s words cut deep and how she’s been stringing Bellamy along for scraps, and not for the first time she asks herself the fundamental question. _Does_ she deserve to be loved like she wants to? And the tears fall, because her self-loathing side answers _no_. 

She pulls the blanket over her head – it smells like Bellamy and it _kills her_ \-- and covers her mouth with both hands, and shakes. By the minute, holding back her sobs is too hard, and the flood the room. 

And this? 

This might be the first time she’s allowed herself to cry, since Finn’s corpse was burned. It still hurts.

“Raven.” The voice is so quiet, she almost thinks it’s a mirage. Her sobs cease, breath held as she waits for the sound to repeat, to make sure she hasn’t just been found crying, being weak and helpless and curled up into a ball under the covers like a child. There’s a faint knock on her door, and again, “Raven,” but kinder, on a sigh. 

Here, the conundrum: on the other side of her door, which isn’t even a door at all as much as it’s a flap made of harder plastic and barely isolating sound, there’s Bellamy. He’s heard, if he’s been there even for the past few seconds. She doesn’t want him to hear her, doesn’t want him to pity or forgive or understand her right now. Yet, she doesn’t want to be left alone with her thoughts, because wallowing for too long isn’t a habit she wants to pick up. 

Carefully, she sticks her head out from under the blanket, and looks towards the entrance to her workshop. He’s barely visible through the plastic curtain, but she could distinguish him a mile away. “What?” she asks, pretending like her voice didn’t hitch.

“I couldn’t sleep.” He doesn’t say why. Doesn’t say why his reaction was to come here, to find her, either. (She could guess it had to do with Wick, but why guess and why think of him right now?) “Can I come in?” he adds, quietly. He doesn’t just assume, and he formulates it like it’s a favour she’d be doing _him_ , and god for a moment she swears she could love him. If she doesn’t already, in some way. 

She doesn’t trust herself with words, so she just makes a noise that sounds like consent, and watches him enter with wide eyes. He doesn’t talk about what he sees in her face when he spots her. Doesn’t mention the vulnerability there, doesn’t tell her that he reads in her expression what she needs. 

He just takes his shoes off, and climbs in bed between her and the wall, lying on his back and not touching her, but touching her down to her marrow, again. After a sigh, he adds, “Monty’s taken to snoring.” Like the ruse isn’t yet up, and they’re not here because they sleep better when together than when separated. “So if it’s okay with you, I’m gonna just hang out here for a while.”

She forces herself to pull air into her lungs with a shaky inhale, and exhales with a hitch in her breath; her brain hasn’t accepted yet that sobbing time is over. With her back to him, she nods first and only hopes he sees. He does: “Thanks.” 

Then, after five minutes, during which she cries quietly what there’s left to cry about, and he lets her without making it about himself and what he can do, when she’s finally calmed down, she feels his fingers in her hair. Gentle, very gentle, and careful. 

“Haven’t seen you wear it down in a while,” he murmurs, more to himself than her. He hasn’t, not since they slept together, because that’s her move: hair down before bed, and before _bed_. The image she must present him with tonight has got to be the farthest thing from that experience he’d had of her with her hair loose. “You have a lot of hair,” he adds. 

God, she thinks, _he’s so awkward_. It’s a wonder he’s gotten laid at all, if that’s how far his flirting skills take him. But he makes her let out a little laugh, one that acts like a sort of balm. A sort of painkiller.

She sighs. “Bellamy?” She waits, for him to hum as a show that he’s paying attention. Tired, she lets the walls drop, and if she’s petty and selfish, he can call her out on it too. Hell knows she’s used to that tonight. “Just hold me.”

He does. Until she falls asleep, and beyond that, until she wakes up; he holds her.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to **semele** , who let me bounce thoughts at her, and is all around a genuinely nice person. Enabler and all. (When is it my turn?)
> 
> PS: I like to edit/correct my works after I post them, it's my system. You might find subtle changes in versions from today till tomorrow, but oh well.


End file.
